The Senate Appropriations Committee today backed the addition of $111M to the $400M CPB advance appropriation for FY08 recently approved by the House, APTS reported. The Senate panel okayed $35M for DTV conversion, $40M for an upgrade of pubTV's satellite system, $25M for Ready to Learn and $11 million for Ready to Teach.

CPB has released an RFP for public radio music programming. Proposals will compete for $1 million of the $6.4 million available this year for national radio programming.

An upcoming Masterpiece Theater will feature Rupert Everett as Sherlock Holmes, prompting the Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes to quip that the network "must now find a Masterpiece Theatre production starring a homophobic actor to preserve that perfect 'balance' demanded by Corporation for Public Broadcasting chief Ken Tomlinson."

"'[B]alance' is not the whole story and supporters of public broadcasting should not take it as some sort of gold standard," writes former CPB employee Elizabeth Spiro Clark on TomPaine.com.

Some newspapers misreported how much CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson spent to hire lobbyists and commission Fred Mann's report, CJR Daily points out.